Quiet with 4HDs?

BoB-O · Post by **BoB-O** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 12:10 am

Hey all,

I'm planning my new system and one requirement is that it be quiet (not going for silence here) and have redundant storage. I've had a few drives blow up recently, taking a lot of data along with them.

Anyhow, I'm planning on a 4 drive system. One boot 74GB Raptor and 3 Maxtor DM10 300GB drives in RAID 5. Currently, I run a machine with a 1st gen 15K SCSI drive, a 2nd gen 10K SCSI drive, an old Antec PS, and a bunch of old Antec 80mm fans. The system is LOUD. Do you expect I'll be able to achieve a substantially quieter system with the 4 SATA drives I mentioned? The rest of my system will consist of a 3700BQE case, A8N-SLI Premium, Fanless 6600 video card, case fans replaced with Nexus 120mm fans, PS replaced with a Seasonic S12-430, and a NEC 3540A DVDRW.

All in all, I think the hard drives will be the loudest factor here. I don't want to spend a whole lot of time doing crazy stuff to mount the drives, I'm just trying to set expectations.

Thanks,
BoB

Likif · Post by **Likif** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 2:47 pm

yes, I think that the new system would be substantially less loud.

but if you're not going to suspend those HDs, it's going to growl and bark when writing data. It's just that the rest of the system sounds wonderful. Would be a shame to, um, ruin it.

What are you using it for? And how will you cool the HDs?

BoB-O · Post by **BoB-O** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 4:14 pm

This will just be my main PC. I plan to cool the drives with a 120mm fan placed inside the case, just to the motherboard side of the drive cage (to pull air across the drives). I plan on putting the Raptor at the bottom, since it is the hottest; no sense in baking it with the heat from the rest of the drives. The drive trays use some pretty soft isolating grommets. Since I don't ever move this PC, I don't think I'll tighten the screws much; that should help.

I'd be willing to entertain the thought of other cases, but the prime concern for me is ease of access to replace a drive if I need to. The Antec SLK-3700BQE has nice slide-out trays that face the right way for my desk.

BoB

sgtpokey · Post by **sgtpokey** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 7:00 pm

If you want to spend the dough and are not afraid of passively cooling 4 drives you can think of this:

http://www.atechfabrication.com/product ... torage.htm

the one benefit for you is since it's an external sata enclosure you'll have easier access to the hard drives than if it was in your computer case.

I understand you are going for quiet and not silence AND you are probably more concerned about data reliability so you're probably going to want to get some assurance as to the cooling properties of the enclosure.
You can email the guy about any temperature concerns you may have, he's replied to my questions promptly and with professionalism.

Personally I have this on my list for a new computer build, but I don't have one yet...

Post by **MikeC** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 7:11 pm

A P180 would work well with all those drives. The built in- soft rubber grommets will do a LOT to reduce the HDD noise.

No way you can suspend them all to get rid of both the idle and seek noise, due to the amount of space needed. Even if each drive is on say 23 dBA/1m at idle, with 4, you will be at ~30 dBA /1m, which is not quiet. During seek, it could easily jump to to 35~38 dBA.

In contrast, mounting the drives "normally" in the P180, you'll probably be at ~32 dBA max during seek, and maybe 28 dBA at idle.

BoB-O · Post by **BoB-O** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 7:38 pm

MikeC wrote:A P180 would work well with all those drives. The built in- soft rubber grommets will do a LOT to reduce the HDD noise.

No way you can suspend them all to get rid of both the idle and seek noise, due to the amount of space needed. Even if each drive is on say 23 dBA/1m at idle, with 4, you will be at ~30 dBA /1m, which is not quiet. During seek, it could easily jump to to 35~38 dBA.

In contrast, mounting the drives "normally" in the P180, you'll probably be at ~32 dBA max during seek, and maybe 28 dBA at idle.

I'm not fond of how one may have to disconnect all the drives to pull the P180 cage out (depending on which drive fails). I really wish the drives were mounted with the butt end pointing out for quick swappage. Do you think the BQE will be significantly louder?

Thanks!
BoB

thetoad30 · Post by **thetoad30** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 7:55 pm

Be careful: With the way that power supply lines are, you may, depending on the length of your cables, have to disconnect at least 2 drives anyway. Usually at least 2 drives are connected per cable, and sometimes even 4 per cable as I have. I have a similar side-mounted system like you, and even though its not a 1-by-1 drive rail (they are grouped together like the P180, just turned sideways like the 3700BQE), I still would have to disconnect at least 2 drives, if not more, just to replace one, just because of the cabling limitations.

Just FYI.

Post by **MikeC** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 8:02 pm

In the p180, mount 2 on the bottom and 2 on top, if you like.

Likif · Post by **Likif** » Mon Jun 20, 2005 5:17 am

yes, a case with built-in grommets is the best option, I agree. And hassle-free.

Post by **MikeC** » Mon Jun 20, 2005 5:50 am

Do you think the BQE will be significantly louder?

W/ 4 drives mounted normally in the two cases, absolutely no question.

nick705 · Post by **nick705** » Mon Jun 20, 2005 6:21 am

BoB-O wrote: I'd be willing to entertain the thought of other cases, but the prime concern for me is ease of access to replace a drive if I need to. The Antec SLK-3700BQE has nice slide-out trays that face the right way for my desk.

BoB

If you're interested in hot-swappability, you might want to have a look at the Chenbro SR209 (there's a review at THG here, and another here and here). As usual none of the reviews mention how it performs acoustically, although from the general design I'd imagine it would at least be in Antec 3700 territory, and it's not the cheapest solution if you go for the SATA hot-swap module.

I've got a Raptor and a 300GB Maxtor DM10 incidentally, and FWIW the Raptor seems to run somewhat cooler than the DM10 going by the finger test...

Post by **MikeC** » Mon Jun 20, 2005 6:31 am

nick705 wrote:I've got a Raptor and a 300GB Maxtor DM10 incidentally, and FWIW the Raptor seems to run somewhat cooler than the DM10 going by the finger test...

This should be no surprise -- one platter vs. 2 (or is it 3?).

nick705 · Post by **nick705** » Mon Jun 20, 2005 6:57 am

MikeC wrote: This should be no surprise -- one platter vs. 2 (or is it 3?).

The 74GB Raptor has 2 platters, and the DM10 has 3 I believe. I wouldn't fancy stacking 3 DM10s in close proximity without active cooling, although my two drives are fine in a SLK3700AMB (no front fan) with an empty bay between them.

BoB-O · Post by **BoB-O** » Mon Jun 20, 2005 7:45 am

nick705 wrote:
MikeC wrote: This should be no surprise -- one platter vs. 2 (or is it 3?).
The 74GB Raptor has 2 platters, and the DM10 has 3 I believe. I wouldn't fancy stacking 3 DM10s in close proximity without active cooling, although my two drives are fine in a SLK3700AMB (no front fan) with an empty bay between them.

Yeah, but do you think I'll have a problem stacking them with the (somewhat common approach of a) 120mm fan pulling air across them?

Thanks,
BoB

BoB-O · Post by **BoB-O** » Mon Jun 20, 2005 7:46 am

MikeC wrote:
Do you think the BQE will be significantly louder?
W/ 4 drives mounted normally in the two cases, absolutely no question.

I'm new to this whole quiet computing thing, but assuming a certain level of "mushiness", isn't a grommet a grommet? Why would the BQE be significantly louder?

BoB

nick705 · Post by **nick705** » Mon Jun 20, 2005 8:03 am

BoB-O wrote: Yeah, but do you think I'll have a problem stacking them with the (somewhat common approach of a) 120mm fan pulling air across them?

Thanks,
BoB

I think you should be OK as long as there's enough space between the drives to allow the air to flow freely across and between them. You'd need to look at the position of the fan mounting in relation to the drives to check they were all getting their fair share, but they don't need massive amounts of airflow to keep them cool, as the heat being dissipated is quite low in comparison with other PC components - as long as there's at least *some* movement and one of the drives isn't stuck in a stagnant hot pocket you should be fine.

I guess if you need to prioritise you'd want to keep the array of DM10s in the bulk of the airflow if they're holding your data and the Raptor is the system drive, especially as they run a bit hotter anyway...

Post by **MikeC** » Mon Jun 20, 2005 8:28 am

BoB-O wrote:I'm new to this whole quiet computing thing, but assuming a certain level of "mushiness", isn't a grommet a grommet? Why would the BQE be significantly louder?

BoB

After you've played with different dampening materials for a little while, you realize that there are HUGE difference. The grommets are very different -- the ones on the P180 HDD cages are the best of their type that I have seen or handled or tried. The ones on the SLK3000 are much harder and nowhere as effective. They are typical for "HDD damping grommets".

Even playing around with different types of clothing elastic, you come to realize that the tension applied, along with thickness, stretchiness, unsupported length -- and even what the anchor points are -- all make a difference in how much noise/vibration reduction happens. (Not to mention the noise/vibration source, itslef, of course.)